Hoping for dinner in the Depression

 

"Thanksgiving Pie'' (print of oil painting), by William Meade Prince, who did magazine covers in the golden age of that medium -- from about 1900 to 1965. This one was done in 1930, as America slid deeper into the Great Depression.  As Joseph Asch noted in Dartblog.com, Mr. Prince's work  appeared on the cover of The Saturday Evening Post, Red Book, Cosmopolitan and Collier’s as well as The Country Gentleman.

Mr. Asch noted it  ''seems quaint that magazines would commission oil paintings to appear as cover art.'' We recommend that readers visit the National Museum of American Illustration, in Newport, R.I., to see an astonishing collection of the originals of this great popular art form.